New cancer grant review will consider science and business

Updated 11:55 pm, Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The re-evaluation of a controversial grant application by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will consider research as well as business elements - a key concession to concerns raised by the agency's top scientific officer, who resigned in protest over the original award.

In a statement Wednesday, the leader of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) defended the institute's handling of the $20 million grant, but said M.D. Anderson's resubmitted application will now "entail a joint scientific and commercialization review."

"While we at CPRIT originally felt the only review required for (this grant) would be by commercial experts, we always want to select the very best projects for the state of Texas," wrote executive director Bill Gimson. "With that in mind, a joint science and commercial review seems reasonable and prudent."

CPRIT is the state's taxpayer-funded, $3 billion assault on cancer. Launched in 2009, it is the nation's second-largest source of cancer research funding, having awarded more than $500 million to scientists. It also funds efforts, such as M.D. Anderson's proposal, to commercialize new cancer treatments.

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The grant, a merging of applications by M.D. Anderson and Rice, was approved March 29, but in May it came under fire for irregularities in the review process.

Wednesday's announcement came a week after M.D. Anderson offered to resubmit its application and CPRIT agreed. That decision followed the resignation of Nobel Laureate Alfred Gilman, who objected to a lack of scientific review in the process, and disclosures that three of the five business experts involved in the commercialization review had ties to the project.

A CPRIT spokesman last week said the new review would be conducted by the commercialization council, "but probably not the same individuals that reviewed it the first time."

Gilman, the institute's chief scientific adviser, said Wednesday night he didn't know enough details about the new plan to comment.

Phillip Sharp, the chairman of CPRIT's scientific review council, called the change "a step in the right direction."

Sharp, an MIT molecular biologist and geneticist and also a Nobel Laureate, was one of the authors of a May letter to Gimson echoing the concern that Gilman cited in resigning. The concern was that M.D. Anderson's plan was a research proposal masquerading as a commercialization venture.

Dan Fontaine, M.D. Anderson's vice president for business affairs, said the cancer center remains confident its application was correctly submitted in the commercialization category, but said if CPRIT "wants to review components it didn't the first time, that's fine with us."

Contrary to M.D. Anderson's previous plan to resubmit its original application with no changes, Fontaine said the cancer center now may provide more scientific information about the plan.

Fontaine said his office and the provost's office will review the new application before it goes to CPRIT. Neither reviewed it the first time.

Under the original grant award, M.D. Anderson was to get $15 million to $18 million. Rice's grant application is not being re-evaluated